Anyone who spends enough time with me knows how I feel about probiotics. In your digestive system, there are all sorts of microorganisms that help you stay healthy, your gut flora. Medication, alcohol, sugar, and many other factors can harm your gut flora. This can lead to all sorts of health problems. Probiotics help restore your gut flora. Probiotic supplements are available, but not all are of good quality, and the good ones can be really expensive. This is why I’m a fan of sauerkraut (the benefits, not the taste, bleugh). It cost me all of $2 for the cabbage and about $5 for the salt because all I had on hand was iodised salt. The salt will last me for many, many uses.

Now, I know you might be asking yourself why you would make sauerkraut when you can conveniently buy it at the supermarket. Unless otherwise specified, the jarred stuff you buy at the grocery store doesn’t have the probiotic benefits. So, if you’re interested, let’s get started!

Probiotic Sauerkraut

What you need
1 cabbage (red or green)
Non-iodized salt (I use 1 tbsp, but work to your tastes)
A large bowl (or two)
Jars – I reused two pickle jars
Patience

How to proceed
Quarter the cabbage. Remove the really thick ribs and the core. Take one quarter, lay it down on one of the flat sides, and slice it as thin as you possibly can without adding your fingers to the ingredients. Put the shreds into a bowl. I needed two bowls to fit all the cabbage.

Add the salt now – it will help you for the next step. Because I was using red cabbage and I didn’t want to go to work looking like a smurf, I used plastic gloves, but I just ended up ripping right through them. You might as well not bother with that.

This is where the fun begins. What you’re going to want to do now is start “massaging” the cabbage. Basically, you’ll be grabbing handfuls of shreds and making a fist with your hand, squeezing the cabbage. Kind of like when people with curly hair scrunch their hair. What this will accomplish, after you’ve repeated enough times, is squeeze the juice out of the cabbage and soften it. The salt helps speed that up. The first bowl took me half an hour because I wasn’t sure what to do, but the second bowl took me about seven minutes. You want there to be enough of the cabbage juice to cover all the cabbage once you pack it down in a jar, which is precisely what you’ll want to do at this point (unless you’re easily amused and want to keep squeezing the cabbage).

Make sure the cabbage is packed down as much as it can be in the jar so that the juice level stays higher than the cabbage level. Any cabbage which isn’t covered runs the risk of developing bad bacteria. Now you close the jar and you wait. I suggest doing other things while you wait, like going to work and sleeping, because you’ll be waiting a while. For me, that was four days. Some people say it takes longer though. Open the jar once a day to release the (foul-smelling) gasses. If your house/apartment/unspecified dwelling is too warm, you may start to see mold. You can remove a thin layer of sauerkraut without having to discard the whole batch, if that happens.

When it’s done, the finished product will be a different colour than the cabbage was when you bought it (or stole it, not that I encourage this). A few days after it’s started fermenting, taste it once a day to decide when it’s at the point when you like it. When it gets to that point, you’ll want to transfer it to the fridge.

Because I dislike the taste of sauerkraut, I add a generous amount of olive oil and black pepper when I dish it out, and it actually turns out to be quite tasty. You can cook it or fry it or whatever it is that people do with it, but that gets rid of the probiotic benefits.

The biggest chunk of my morning routine consists of delaying getting up. This leaves me little time to do everything else one does in the morning, so I end up having to choose what’s more important to me. It’s sad to say, but doing my hair is higher on my list of priorities than breakfast. I drink my cup of lemon hot water and my shot of apple cider vinegar while I do my make up, I brush my teeth, and then I’m out the door. I tell myself I’ll just eat a nut bar at work (if I had a nickel for every time I also skipped the nut bar…). As you can imagine, pancakes before work are as likely as beach weather in January.

On the odd day, I do like to have a nice breakfast. There’s nothing like pancakes to keep you full until your next meal. I’ve experimented a lot with vegan and gluten free pancakes. It should be said that it hasn’t been an easy one to figure out. This recipe is the closest I’ve ever gotten to gluten-textured pancakes, but it’s not quite the same, so be warned.

Directions
Start by preparing your flax egg by mixing the water with the flax. It needs to sit for about 5 minutes. Beat well until it looks frothy.

Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Then, in a separate bowl (or a large measuring cup), combine the wet ingredients. Pour the flax egg and the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and mix well. The batter will be thick, but it should be a bit runny. If it doesn’t spread out in the bowl on its own, add more milk, 1 tablespoon at a time. You still want it to be thicker than gluten-containing pancake batter.

Pour oil in a frying pan and let it warm up over medium heat (or slightly lower). Using a ladle, pour a bit of batter in the frying pan. You’ll need to spread it with the back of the ladle. After about 3-4 minutes, flip it and cook for an additional 2 minutes.

*For a more crepe-like consistency, omit the baking powder and increase the amount of milk until the batter is quite runny.

Some typical ingredients for baking contain hidden sources of gluten, corn, and whatever else you might have food sensitivities to. I’ve had to research every ingredient I use because I’ve had some bad surprises in the past. I’d never really given much thought to what baking powder was until my naturopathic doctor pointed out that to heal properly, I’d need to cut out every source of corn (and other allergens), including baking powder.

You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes before you die? I think that something similar happens when you find out something you love is out of your reach (baking, in this case). After my ND mentioned the concern with baking powder, Jann Arden’s “Will You Remember Me” started playing in my head, as I remembered all those fun moments in my kitchen.

Let me say this. There’s nothing that’s going to stop me from baking. I decided to look up how to make my own baking powder. Don’t let the cost of cream of tartar deter you. That small container is actually so much bigger than it seems. Alternatively, you can buy it in bulk from a health food store or Bulk Barn for much cheaper.

This recipe made one cup. I keep it in a plastic container in my refrigerator. This makes it last longer, but make sure to put deodorising baking soda in your fridge, or the baking soda in this recipe will take up that job. You’ll end up with baking powder that smells like your produce and whatnot. Anyway, here it is the baking powder recipe.

When I buy kale, I start dreaming about all the meals and green smoothies I’ll be able to make. There’s only so much I can make with one bunch of kale though, and I don’t buy more than one bunch for fear of wasting it. This time, I went for an apple kale salad.

This salad is wonderful for so many reasons. It’s detox friendly, especially if you use organic raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar and fresh lemon juice. It’s high in iron and other essential nutrients. It’s easy to make on a student budget. It’s filling. And most importantly, it’s tasty.

Apples are the #1 item on the Dirty Dozen list, and kale is about to make its way onto the list (update 03/31/16: kale is on the 2015 list). If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I suggest you have a look at this. While this is the US version, it’s not very different from what you should expect in Canada. If you can use organic apples and kale, I highly recommend it. If not, wash your kale really well and peel your apple.

Directions
Cut up the kale leaves, removing the ribs. In a small bowl, mix the wet ingredients together. Cut up the apple into bite sizes when you’re ready to pour the dressing on the salad. The lemon in the dressing will stop the apples from darkening. Sprinkle seeds and toss well. The kale leaves will soften up a bit after a few minutes. Serve right away.

I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a food blog for quite some time, but my lack of camera and photography skills have stopped me until now. I still don’t expect my pictures to be good for a while, but please bear with me! Putting my work on the internet feels a bit scary, but I decided to take the leap. I figured this jello would be a good place to start.

During a much needed grocery trip on Boxing Day, I had a hard time finding lemons. All that was left were bags of 8 organic lemons. If you ever buy organic food, you know that it doesn’t last as long as the alternative. Well, ever since, I’ve been making all sorts of desserts using lemons in the hopes of not having to waste any food.

This jello is both vegan and sugar free. Once in a while, I like to do a seven-day detox cleanse. Basically, I follow a vegan, gluten free, sugar free, alcohol free diet for a week. Dessert options can feel limited when you detox. Until you make this jello, that is. The ginger and lemon both help the detox and make this jello seem like a fancy dessert.

Ginger Lemon Jello

Directions
Combine all ingredients in a saucepan. Bring just to a boil and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour into recipient of choice (single servings or one big bowl both work) and refrigerate for at least an hour to have it thicken. It won’t be completely cold so if you can leave it in a bit longer, I would suggest you try it.